A review of the literature on meaningful experiences in physical education and youth sport published in Quest

The LAMPE team is delighted to announce that we have had an article published ahead of print in the journal Quest. The paper is titled: Meaningful experiences in physical education and youth sport: A review of the literature and can be accessed freely by anyone – no paywall! Stephanie led the review of 50 peer-reviewed articles published since 1987 on what young people find meaningful in PE and youth sport. We highlighted five factors that influence the meaningfulness participants derive from physical education and youth sport settings using Kretchmar’s (2006) ideas about common components of meaningful experiences, which we have used in previous blog posts. Specifically, there was support for four of Kretchmar’s (2006) components, namely: social interaction, challenge, fun, and motor competence. Kretchmar also lists delight, however, we did not find strong enough support in the literature to identify that component yet. As we outline in the article, this is not to argue against its significance – only that young people do not mention delight or related concepts to describe meaningfulness. While we did not find support for delight, we added another component, which we called “Personally Relevant Learning”. These are things young people find relevant from their PE/youth sport experiences that they can apply to their lives outside of the classroom or off the playing field. We believe the review sheds light on the concept of meaningful experiences in physical education and youth sport and anticipate the readers’ understanding of the topic will be enriched in much the same way ours has been in the writing of it.